


All the Beautiful Things

by sinverguenza



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Het, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-19
Updated: 2015-12-19
Packaged: 2018-05-07 17:23:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5464772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinverguenza/pseuds/sinverguenza
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Simple information isn't enough.  He wants more than that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All the Beautiful Things

His earliest memory:

Crying on the stone floor of Mother’s kitchen. The reason is lost to time. She’s holding his legs as he kicks at her. Father is away – he’s not always away, but it feels like it to him.

Mother is kind, doesn’t yell because she doesn’t yell anymore, she says, but he can feel her frustration without a spoken word.

“Ben. You’ve got to learn to calm yourself. You’ve got enough fire in your blood already. Don’t strike matches.”

The boy Ben burns sticks in the forest behind Mother’s house, watching the leaves catch fire, the smoke twisting into the air, into the stars above him.

\-----

He sets the garden on fire many years later, and it’s not his fault, says Father and Mother, but it feels like a punishment, anyway. Uncle lives on the driest of planets, so dry that they have to farm for moisture. He works long hours in the fields with the droids, and wears a simple hood of muslin to keep the sun from his brow.

“Who you hiding from, under there?” says Uncle. Uncle is kind. Everyone is so fucking kind.

\-----

He learns quickly, says Uncle, and for his 14th birthday, he is given a blue lightsaber. Uncle’s lightsaber.

“I don’t need it anymore.” Uncle’s eyes are sad, always sad, but he touches his head, and the boy Ben is happy.

Father sends him a gift and a letter, with poor writing and misspellings.

\-----

He learns so quickly, says Uncle, that it’s frightening. Uncle says this to Mother, quietly, one night, when the boy Ben is supposed to sleep.

\-----

Kylo Ren has burned hands, hands that held a red flame between his fingers and nothingness, sliced it, spread it, molded it, conquered it.

\-----

When he joined the First Order, Kylo Ren believed that he had found his place, but it is not so. He feels as unbalanced, as off-kilter as he did on Mother’s kitchen floor. His subordinates listen, or don’t. While he has free run of the Order, he is not necessarily obeyed.

Which is fine. He never longed for obedience. He never wanted an army.

He never wanted an ally.

He never wanted a student.

\-----

The Girl is young…so young. He was expecting a woman. Instead he’s faced with the smoothest of child-skin, and for a time he thought she was less than a girl at that. 

She sleeps in the confinement chair, her brow softly sweated, strands of hair clinging to her face. He waits and watches for her to wake.

Her mind is an unholy creation, and he's not angry when she expels him, enters him. He's obsessed.

But he’s livid when she escapes. His temper is lost, again, that everlong battle ( _Ben, don’t strike matches_ ) that he's forever losing.

\-----

He reaches a point where there are no consequences, just the unbearable torture of the push-pull that is his life.

She screams when he pulls the sucking red flame from Father’s body, and some part of his gut clenches for the first time in years.

\-----

The blood is dripping from his ribs, pooling in his boot, but that’s not what holds him back. He could destroy her.

Instead, he watches her teeth as they bite into her lip, the reflection from that perfect blue flame slipping over her chin.

Her torso twists, her hair swings forward.

He dives toward her mind, one hand reaching forward, for her. He thinks he could probably break her, but he fears it. He thinks it would somehow destroy the soft clench of her that he seeks.

The ground splits, and he’s pulled away. And in that moment , he’s glad that he won’t have to kill her. He doesn't want to kill her.

He wants to teach her. He wants to teach her everything.


End file.
